elysianwing

[elysianwing]

Midnight Resolutions

I'll whisper this vow into the breeze, making certain it carries on in the safekeeping of the wind's arm, until it strikes your ears. I'm being drained... more surely than slow. I am using up what emotions I have. Meager as they are, they have kept me alive up to now. Yet, this black hole is ripping from me the energy to repair. So I shall leap in after it in deliberate delirium, and make certain that I take back what I hold as my own. In this resolve I now stand atop a hill gazing at the sky. At twilight's side with pen of fire writing my message in the stars... so everyone can look upon the midnight hour of my heart.

Posted 7/14/2003 at 1:35 AM by Alexander Learmont https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

Whittling

I am carving myself out of nothing like the whittling of wood from a tree that never grew. Marred by the broken blade of paralyzing potential and plentiful possibility, the memory of my actual self is fragmented and missing. I’m fitting myself back together… as best I can yet numerous pieces don't belong in this jigsaw puzzle. I shall mend myself though, through trial and error. Fitting awkward fragments together, bit by broken bit until I’m whole again. I suppose… I should be somewhat pleased, it is not often for failures to amount to anything in defiance of their fate. Yet my face is obscured, even still, the details of my existence decidedly indistinct. So I start over, and grab another limb to cut, carve, and create the necessary changes, for the previous version just wouldn’t fit. It won't be long however, before the changes dwindle down from double digits to decimals and degrees. Soon enough I’ll have no choice but to call myself complete. I just wonder, will I be happy with what I see? 9/23/2024 rewrite.  Originally Posted 7/13/2003 at 3:50 AM by Alexander Learmont https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

Disappointed By A Dream

Celestial candles burning amidst the open black sky. Your eyes reflecting a warmth, found only between the words unspoken. Air fragrant with your vanilla scented skin, blown away with the breeze I long to be, for it touches your very soul. The stars envy my position, for I'm closer to beauty than even they fathom. I'm entranced.... enslaved....enveloped by your mere presence. Still, I desire more. My hand reaches out dying of thirst, demanding a taste of your skin. Yet as I blink, you disintegrate and I am left alone. For in that moment, my eyes were closed, I saw the sunlight playing beyond my lids.... I knew I had awoken. The dream was gone and I  felt darkness like never before.

Posted 7/11/2003 at 2:15 AM by Alexander Learmont https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

Prometheus

If I could just reach my worn and shaky hands back through time, and tear open my chest to steal back the fire of my heart, like Prometheus; to give myself the gift of hot-blooded gusto and set the world ablaze with nothing more than my passions, piss, and vinegar. I could conquer the world today, if I only had a sliver of the stamina I had yesterday. Maybe tomorrow then. I could douse myself in gasoline and ignite once more to shine as a bright beacon of hope, that any one of us on any day, can be beautiful and brilliant... mighty and magnificent... careening through our concrete fates, like a mad car crashing through the guard rails, driving hot and hard and fast, for as far and as long as the fuel will take us. Except...who can afford the gas these days? Maybe tomorrow...never comes, what then? Then tonight I must remind the stars that we streaked and stormed among them long ago, like cracks of lightning chasing after comets while God was crafting all of creation. We were the fucking light meant to cut the dark in half and blind the envious eyes of angels and eternity. We still are... I just forget how to do it from time to time.

written 9/14/2024@1:55am by Alexander Learmont https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

Sea of Sand

Two separate grains in a sea of sand, trapped in the hourglass waiting for their turn to pass from one chamber, one prison of decadence to the next. Watching their cellmates leave them behind. You can imprison the vessel but you can’t chain the mind. Should they bond together, two becoming one, they throw a wrench into the system... and time stands still just for them. For time is relative to the surroundings and this new entity is larger than life. Lost in each other they remain in a standstill. For no one grain shall tear them apart and the hole through which the fallen are seen is too miniscule to sever their ties. and so I wait, time passing me by….. until my counterpart emerges from the sea of sand.

Posted 7/8/2003 at 9:18 PM by Alexander Learmont https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

Rough Draft

I know this place. I know it well… It is where…when left alone, my ideas go to die. Their haggard bodies litter the ground here conceived while showering, or doing busy-work… or just before I fall asleep only to dissipate like most all dreams do. It’s only been a few days since I last wrote something new, but already I can feel the words trying to slip away from me falling between my weary fingers like grains of sand sliding through an hourglass. Taunting me as the seconds grow, one by one until they morph all at once into an endless silence, enveloping the space around me and stealing away all but the sounds of my breath as it echoes softly. Audible, yet still saying nothing like this damnable blinking cursor on my word-pad. Were it only so easy, as making this cursor move. I could let myself fall asleep and lie my head down on my keyboard spilling my dreams onto the page as the weight of my skull is cradled by the soft pillows of depressed keys. Tearing the white away one drooling, snoring, tossing and turning letter at a time. Written 9/8/2024 @ 10:12pm by Alexander Learmont https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

Fireworks

Explosions of light. Fireworks, blanketing the sky. Cascading colors in pleasant design, descending in patterns similar to the willow's leaves. Flooding my perception... I dare not look directly, its beauty far too strong, I fear I'll go blind. I'm too far away to properly appreciate such visual perfection... not close enough to you to even try and understand. I reach out, but try as I might you only seem to fall further away. Explosions of self... now the light is darkness. Pure crimson, with a backdrop of black. Born inside,  from a feeling of displeasure, it illuminates my very being. How can I look away when the dark is coming from within? This is not beautiful... just another failed attempt.

Posted 6/30/2003 at 9:29 PM by Alexander Learmont https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

Think Again

When one is a loner can they really be surprised to find they are alone? Does the preference of solitude automatically justify the absence of another's presence? There were times I desired to be shielded from the harsh world surrounding. I never wanted loneliness. Hindsight always seems to be a step too late. I scorched the bridges, bound myself to the barriers. My mind never graced by the thought I stranded myself.

Written 6/27/2003 @ 12:27 AM by Alexander Learmont https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

Rising Promises

I found a tattered notebook, I recall the promises… the naïve scribblings. However, the words are faded now, completely indistinguishable amidst the lined papers. No one shall see the broken ambitions from a time of hope. The failed experiments performed in a carefree housing. Time will never get my best though, my memory is still intact. A reminder of the discrepancies between me and myself. When potential was abundant… when confidence soared. Before reality sunk in like the sun deep into the horizon. The sun always returns though…. as if in defiance of the sky. It won't secede…neither shall I. I wonder if the time will come that I may surface again. With newfound resolve in my eyes, fresh from the recoil. You can't keep me down forever, I won't be stopped from rising again. Written 6/26/03 @ 2:20am by Alexander Learmont https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

Panning

We often trick ourselves into thinking poems need be long and drawn out to extract some sort of truth from the stream of consciousness outpouring from our lips, pen-tips, and keystrokes... like prospectors sifting the earth searching for gold specks in dirt lifted from a river's bed. We must take great care to remind ourselves on occasion that the time we spend looking for golden truth is not nearly as important as where we start our search. written 9/1/2024 @ 7:58pm by Alexander Learmont https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

Climate Change

I remember when the writing first slowed. Reduced from a deluge to a dribble. I'd spent a lot of time then, brooding over how repetitive it felt and how stagnant I believed I had become. I'd read my old works over and over and over and over cringing at the banality... of those tried and overwrote tired and overwrought overthought words. How could I have known? How could I have ever guessed that all of the bodies... these corpses of curiosity and creativity, that I was burying in my mind, would ruin the soil of my imagination and leave my ideas infertile? I let my skies cloud with smog, paved over my rainforests with tar, and hunted my buffalo to extinction. "S'just writer's block" I said as I sang my own elegy. My motivation laid to rest in the family crypt, beside potential, ambition and childhood wonder. Somehow, back then I'd forgotten exactly how much I just fucking love to write. I tripped all over myself trying to drum up interest trying to come up with new ideas trying to figure out how I might monetize.... I fell down and convinced myself I'd died, when in fact I'd only bumped my head. There is nothing we can do in this life that I know of, more fulfilling and worthwhile than taking the time to put your thoughts into words and ramble on repetitively redundantly incessantly about any subject your brain saw fit to muse over for however brief a moment in time. I'd forgotten. Somehow. I remember, now. Written by Alexander Learmont 8/31/2024 9:32pm https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

The whites of my eyes stained by all they have seen. Even when I close them the crimson red and abysmal blacks won't fade for a second. Dreams, my only escape from my dry tears and sighs. Blink once, twice, three times whilst my lids are shut. R.E.M...is as deep a sleep I journey. I'm not awake...until I drift away. The realities my subconscious manufactures are more warm, more inviting than ten lifetimes like this could be. When the breathing slows, and the pulse drops down I feel that fleeting euphoria. It tastes more sour each and every time, I open my eyes to the harsh "actuality" termed my life. Yet, in these restless nights, when insomnia comforts me without request; an annoying "ally" sparing me that bitter flavor... my thoughts toss and turn more than my body. Wrap themselves in blankets thick with anxiety...urging me to converse with them. Heating my brain... where no beads of sweat can quench that thirst, yet flow down my brow steady and unwavering. I'm made Nocturnal, with no say on my own behalf. thoughts most active when activity is in the midst of slumber.   By Alexander Learmont

Posted 6/14/2003 at 4:11 AM 2024 rewrite available @ https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

Context

Around two decades ago in the final days of my senior year of high school, I discovered my love for writing. For poetry. For prose. I bounced around on several blogs(which were the fucking raddest things on the internet at the time) but I couldn't find any that felt comfortable enough to make my home. Until I found a site called Xanga, that is. I took to it immediately, and began what was the most prolific period in my life, artistically. Through Xanga I found about 15 (or so) aspiring writers that impressed/inspired me enough to want to be a better writer - and we knit ourselves together a fairly tight little community...which we kept to varying degrees until the site crawled under the porch and died quietly. I haven't really been able to recapture that same comfortability, nor have I been able to rekindle the fire that burned so hot back then inside my breast - to capture every thought as it occurred to me, and study them....doggedly searching for my truest self, that I was so sure I would find.

I'm hoping to push through these barriers, here, because if nothing else I fucking miss writing. I miss creating something that is *mine*. I miss the ritual of it. The truth of it. The catharsis. Moving forward, in addition to (hopefully) new pieces (and maybe some art here and there), I will begin posting many very old pieces(from the Xanga period) here, because they are the first third of the chapters in my book. They are the context behind who I am today. They are the map I've drawn as I've navigated the scenic route of my self. I warn you all though - the oldest pieces are fucking rough. I was an unabashedly angsty boy back then, and the earliest stuff I was writing was completely saturated with a potent cologne that smacked of smugness, narcissism, and self-deprecation(all of which constantly locked in a sort of 3-way death match to be crowned champion of my most unlikable traits). Last note regarding context - If anyone reading something of mine ever wants more context/explanation to a piece or a thought or whatever, feel welcome to ask me to clarify. I will happily answer. Posted 6/13/2003 at 3:50 AM

Pour your life into my hands as if it were the cup holding that which could change your past. I'll force it down, a toast to new mistakes. for I've learned nothing from the last.  drown your dreams in my ears I want nothing more than to be there when they fail to follow through. I will smile, and hold back my laugh. for a change in your luck is long overdue. dry your tears in the sound of the music I am sure you will need to hear. not long after, I'm confident you will say you had never seen things so clear. By Alexander Learmont https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

When I was young and the internet had only just started to explode into every home in the country, I was spoiled for time. So terribly spoiled. I had endless stretches of seconds, minutes, and hours - every day. Every night. Endless and overflowing with effortless inspiration, with all the time in the world to make manifest whatever dreams may've came and went. I didn't find myself chasing after the clock, trying to steal a few sparse seconds to try and reconnect with the aspects of myself that I used to love the most. I didn't feel like I was awash in an oversaturated sea of content, far too vast to fight my way back to the shore...to get solid ground back under my feet. I just sat, in the dark, bathing in blue light from an old CRT monitor clicking keys relentlessly. Making magic. Conjuring words. My heart breaks for the young, today. They will never know how beautifully simple life was, at the bleeding edge of technology twenty years ago. 8/27/2024 @11:47pm by Alexander Learmont https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing

[elysianwing]

The Deepest Black Written 6/27/2024 @ 11:50am in Cebu, Philippines

Nothing will ever be darker than the sheet black surface of the Pacific Ocean - after sundown. Indeed the nearest black hole to Earth is in the inkwell depths of those unfathomable waters… and that black hole… runs itself straight on through to the opposite end of the world (or at least it does in my head). No. Nothing will ever be darker… not ink, nor space. Not even the beady black eyes of those terrible creatures that rest in the warm wooly blankets of my worst nightmares. Nothing will ever be darker; Yet as the fearsome gravity of that cool black terror grabs ahold of you to drag you down to your icy grave miles below a tempered glass ceiling… the pressure introduces itself to you like an un-talked about relative formerly shunned by the family. Wrapping its arm around your shoulder to pull you in for an awkward hug >t o c r u s h t h e a i r f r o m y o u r l u n g s< and reassure you, that your fears of the dark are wholly unfounded and truly truly it is the weight of the world that you should be worrying about. Who has the time to think about space? When the darkest, deepest abyss hides in the night - in the Pacific, where indeed no light could dare to penetrate nor escape.

If light can’t do it… what prayer could we ever have? By Alexander Learmont https://www.patreon.com/Elysianwing